I look at him. ‘Good.’ I let the pause develop, pregnant with innuendo. ‘No, they’re good.’
His nostrils flare and he shakes his head.
‘God, you’re one lucky . . .’
Lois comes in from the bathroom in a dressing-gown, towelling her thick hair dry.
‘Hi, Edward,’ she says, ‘what’s new?’ Then she sits down on the bed and begins to weep.
We stand and look at her as she sobs quietly.
‘It’s nothing,’ Preston says. ‘She just wants to go home.’ He tells me that neither of them has left the building for eight days. They are completely, literally, penniless. Lois’s parents have cancelled her credit cards and collect calls home have failed to produce any response. Preston has been unable to locate his father and now his stepfather refuses to speak to him (a worrying sign) and although his mother would like to help she is powerless for the moment, given Preston’s fall from grace. Preston and Lois have been living on a diet of olives, peanuts and cheese biscuits served up in the bar and, of course, copious alcohol.
‘Yeah, but now we’re even banned from there,’ Lois says, with an unfamiliar edge to her voice.
‘Last night I beat up on that fuckwit, Serge,’ Preston explains with a shrug. ‘Something I had to do.’
He goes on to enumerate their other problems: their bar bill stands at over $300; Serge is threatening to go to the police unless he is compensated; the management has grown hostile and suspicious.
‘We got to get out of here,’ Lois says miserably. ‘I hate it here, I hate it.’
Preston turns to me. ‘Can you help us out?’ he says. I feel the laugh erupt within me.
I stand in Nice station and hand Preston two train tickets to Luxembourg and two one-way Iceland Air tickets to New York. Lois reaches out to touch them as if they were sacred relics.
‘You’ve got a six-hour wait in Reykjavik for your connection,’ I tell him, ‘but, believe me, there is no cheaper way to fly.’
I bask in their voluble gratitude for a while. They have no luggage with them as they could not be seen to be quitting the Résidence. Preston says his father is now in New York and assures me I will be reimbursed the day they arrive. I have spent almost everything I possess on these tickets, but I don’t care – I am intoxicated with my own generosity and the strange power it has conferred on me. Lois leaves us to go in search of a toilette and Preston embraces me in a clumsy hug. ‘I won’t forget this, man,’ he says many times. We celebrate our short but intense friendship and affirm its continuance, but all the while I am waiting for him to ask me – I can feel the question growing in his head like a tumour. Through the crowds of passengers we see Lois making her way back. He doesn’t have much time left.
‘Listen,’ he begins, his voice low, ‘did you and Annique . . .? I mean, are you –’
‘We’ve been looking for an apartment. That’s why you haven’t seen much of me.’
‘Jesus . . .’
Lois calls out something about the train timetable, but we are not listening. Preston seems to be trembling, he turns away, and when he turns back I see the pale fires of impotent resentment light his eyes.
‘Are you fucking her?’
I look at him in that way men look at each other. And then I say, ‘Why else would we be looking for an apartment?’
Lois arrives and immediately notices Preston’s taut face, oddly pinched. ‘What’s going on?’ Lois asks. ‘Are you OK?’
Preston gestures at me, as if he can’t pronounce my name. ‘Annique . . . They’re moving in together.’
Lois squeals. She’s so pleased, she really is, she really really likes Annique.
By the time I see them on to the train Preston has calmed down and our final farewells are sincere. He looks around the modest station intently as if trying to record its essence, as if now he wished to preserve something of this city he inhabited so complacently, with such absence of curiosity.
‘God, it’s too bad,’ he says with an exquisite fervour. ‘I know I could have liked Nice. I know. I really could.’
I back off, wordless; this is too good, this is too generous of him. This is perfect.
‘Give my love to Annique,’ Preston says quietly, as Lois calls loud goodbyes. He grins. ‘Lucky bastard.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, looking at Preston. ‘I will.’
Alpes Maritimes
Anneliese, Ulricke and I go into Steve’s sitting-room. Steve is sitting at a table writing a letter. ‘Hi,’ he says, not looking up. ‘Won’t be a second.’ He scribbles his name and seals the letter in an envelope as the three of us watch him, wordlessly. He stands and turns to face us. His long clean hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, falls to his shoulders. Perhaps it’s something to do with the dimness of the room but, against the pale ghost of his swimming trunks, his cock seems oddly pigmented – almost brown.
‘Make yourselves at home,’ he says. ‘I’ll just go put some clothes on.’
I have a girl now – Ulricke – and so everything should be all right. And it is, I suppose, except that I want Anneliese, her twin sister. I look closely at Anneliese to see her reaction to Steve’s nakedness (Steve wants Anneliese too). She and Ulricke smile at each other. They both press their lips together with a hand, their eyes thin with delighted amusement at Steve’s eccentricity. Automatically I smile too, but in fact I am covered in a hot shawl of irritation as I recall Steve’s long-stride saunter from the room, his calmness, his unconcern.
* * *
Bent comes in. He is Steve’s flat-mate, a ruddy Swede, bespectacled, with a square bulging face and unfortunate frizzy hair.
‘Does he always do that?’ Anneliese asks.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Bent says, ruefully. ‘He comes in – he removes his clothes.’
The girls surrender themselves to their laughter. I ask for a soft drink.
It wasn’t easy to meet Ulricke. She and Anneliese were doing a more advanced course than me at the Centre and so our classes seldom coincided. I remember being struck by rare glimpses of this rather strong-looking fashionable girl. I think it was Anneliese that I saw first, but I can’t be sure. But the fact is that the one I met was Ulricke. How was I meant to know they were twins? By the time I discovered that those glimpses were not of one and the same person it was too late.
One lunchtime I was walking up to the university restaurant by the Faculté de Droit (the restauru by the fac as the French have it) when I heard my name called.
‘Edward!’ I turned.
It was Henni, a Finnish girl I knew, with Anneliese. At least I thought it was Anneliese but it turned out to be Ulricke. Until you know them both it’s very hard to spot the difference.
We had lunch together. Then Ulricke and I went for coffee to a bar called Le Pub Latin. We spoke French, I with some difficulty. There was no mention of a twin sister, that first day, no Anneliese. I talked about my father; I lied modestly about my age, with more élan about my ambitions. Soon Ulricke interrupted to tell me that she spoke very good English. After that it was much easier.
Ulricke: tall, broad-shouldered, with a round, good-complexioned face – though her cheeks and nose tend to develop a shine as the day wears on – thick straight peanut-coloured hair parted in the middle . . . She and Anneliese are not-quite-identical twins. To be candid, Anneliese is prettier, though by compensation Ulricke has the sweeter temperament, as they say. Recently, Anneliese has streaked her hair blonde, which, as well as distinguishing her from her sister (too late, too late), adds, in my opinion, dramatically to her attractiveness. In Bremen, where they live (father a police inspector), they were both prizewinning gymnasts as youngesters. Ulricke told me that they ceased entering competitions ‘after our bosoms grew’, but the strenuous training has left them with the legacy of sturdy welldeveloped frames. They are thin-hipped and broad-shouldered, with abnormally powerful deltoid muscles which give their figures a tapered manly look.
Steve returns, in pale jeans
, sandals and a cheesecloth smock-shirt he brought back from his last trip to Morocco. He pours wine for everyone. Steve is an American, somewhat older than the rest of us – late twenties, possibly even thirty. He is very clean, almost obsessive with his cleanliness, always showering, always attending to the edges of his body – the calluses on his toes, his teeth, his cuticles. He has a moustache, a neat blond General Custer affair, which curls up at the ends. It’s a similarity – to General Custer – which is amplified by his wavy shoulder-length brown hair. He has spent several years travelling the Mediterranean – Rhodes, Turkey, Ibiza, Hammamet. It’s quite likely that he sells drugs to support himself. He’s not rich, but he’s not poor either. None of us knows where he gets his money. On his return from his last Moroccan trip he had also purchased a mid-calf, butter-coloured Afghan coat, which I covet. I’ve known him vaguely since I arrived in Nice, but lately, because of his interest in Anneliese, I tend to see him rather more often than I would wish. Whenever I get the chance I criticize Steve for Anneliese’s benefit, but subtly, as if my reservations are merely the result of a disinterested study of human nature. Just before we arrived at the flat I managed to get Anneliese to accept that there was something unappealingly sinister about Steve. Now, when he’s out of earshot, we exchange remarks about his nudism. I don’t believe the girls find it as offensive as I do.
‘I think it’s the height of selfishness,’ I say. ‘I didn’t ask to see his penis.’
The girls and Bent laugh.
‘I think he’s strange,’ Anneliese says, with a curious expression on her face. I can’t tell if she finds this alluring or not.
Ulricke and I continued to see each other. Soon I learned about the existence of Anneliese, duly met her and realized my mistake. But by then I was ‘associated’ with Ulricke. To switch attention to Anneliese would have hurt and offended her sister, and with Ulricke hurt and offended, Anneliese would be bound to take her side. I found myself trapped; both irked and tantalized. I came to see Anneliese almost as often as I saw Ulricke. She appeared to like me – to my deep chagrin we became ‘friends’.
I forced myself to concentrate on Ulricke – to whom I was genuinely attracted – but she was only the shadow on the cave wall, so to speak. Of course I was discreet and tactful: Ulricke – and Anneliese at first – knew nothing of my real desires. But as the bonds between the three of us developed I came to think of other solutions. I realised I could never ‘possess’ Anneliese in the way I did her twin; I could never colonize or settle my real affections in her person with her approval . . . And so I resolved to make her instead a sphere of influence – unilaterally, and without permission, to extend my stewardship and protection over her. If I couldn’t have her, then I would do my best to make sure no one else should.
‘When ought we to go to Cherry’s, do you think?’ Bent asks in his precise grammar.
We discuss the matter. Cherry is an American girl of iridescent, unreal – and therefore perfectly inert – beauty. She lives in a villa high above the coast at Villefranche which she shares with some other girl students from a college in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They stick closely and rather chastely together, these American girls, as their guileless amiability landed them in trouble when they first arrived in Nice. The Tunisian boys at the Centre would ask them back to their rooms for a cup of coffee, and the girls, being friendly, intrigued to meet foreigners and welcoming the opportunity to practise their execrable French, happily accepted. And then when the Tunisian boys tried to fuck them they were outraged. The baffled Tunisians couldn’t understand the tears, the slaps, the threats. Surely, they reasoned, if a girl agrees to have a cup of coffee in your room there is only one thing on her mind? As a result, the girls moved out of Nice to their high villa in Villefranche, where – apart from their classes at the Centre – they spent most of their time and their French deteriorated beyond redemption. Soon they could only associate with Anglophones and all yearned to return to the USA. They were strange gloomy exiles, these girls, like passengers permanently in transit. The present moment – always the most important – held nothing for them. Their tenses were either past or future; their moods nostalgia or anticipation. And now one of their number – Cherry – was breaking out, her experiences in Nice having confirmed her in her desire to be a wife. She was returning to marry her bemused beau, and tonight was her farewell party.
We decide to go along, to make our way to Villefranche. Mild Bent has a car – a VW – but he says he has to detour to pick up his girlfriend. Ulricke announces that she and I will hitchhike. Steve and Anneliese can go with Bent, she says. I want to protest, but say nothing.
Ulricke and Anneliese live in a large converted villa, pre-war, up by the Fac de Lettres at Magnan. They rent a large room in a ground-floor flat which belongs to a Uruguayan poet (he teaches Spanish literature at the university) called César.
One night – not long after our first meetings – I’m walking Ulricke home. It’s quite late. I promise myself that if we get to the villa after midnight I’ll ask if I can stay, as it’s a long walk back to my room in the rue Dante down in the city. Dependable Ulricke invites me in for a cup of coffee. At the back of the flat the windows are at ground level and overlook a garden. Ulricke and Anneliese use them as doors to avoid passing through the communal hall. We clamber through the window and into the room. It is big, bare and clean. There are two beds, a bright divan and some wooden chairs which have recently been painted a shiny new red. A few cute drawings have been pinned on the wall and there is a single houseplant, flourishing almost indecently from all the attention it receives – the leaves always dark green and glossy, the earth in the pot moist and levelled. The rest of the flat is composed of César’s bedroom, his study, a kitchen and bathroom.
We drink our coffee, we talk – idly, amicably. Anneliese is late, out at the cinema with friends. I look at my watch: it is after midnight. I make my request and Ulricke offers me the divan. There is a moment, after we have stripped off the coverlet and tucked in an extra blanket, when we both stand quite close to each other. I lean in her direction, a hand weakly touches her shoulder, we kiss. We sit down on the bed. It is all pleasantly uncomplicated and straightforward.
When Anneliese returns she seems pleased to see me. After more coffee and conversation, the girls change discreetly into their pyjamas in the bathroom. While they’re gone I undress to my underpants and socks and slide into bed. The girls come back, the lights go out and we exchange cheery bonsoirs.
On the hard small divan I lie awake in the dark, Ulricke and Anneliese sleeping in their beds a few feet away. I feel warm, content, secure – like the member of a close and happy family, as if Ulricke and Anneliese are my sisters and beyond the door in the quiet house lie our tender parents . . .
In the morning I meet César. He is thin and febrile, with tousled dry hair. He speaks fast but badly flawed English. We talk about London, where he lived for two years before coming to Nice. Ulricke tells me that as a poet he is really quite famous in Uruguay. Also she tells me that he had an affair with Anneliese when the girls first moved in – but now they’re just friends. Unfortunately this forces a change in my attitude towards César: I like him, but resentment will always distance us now. Whenever he and Anneliese talk I find myself searching for vestiges of their former intimacy – but there seems nothing there any more.
We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn. We all own and forge an image of others in our minds that is inviolable and private. We make those private images public at our peril. Revelation is an audacious move to be long pondered. Unfortunately, this impulse occurs when we are least able to control it, when we’re distracted by love – or hate . . .
But we can possess others without their ever being truly aware of it. For example, I possess Steve and Anneliese in ways they would never imagine.
* * *
I often wonder what Anneliese thinks about while Ulricke and I are fucking across the room
from her. Is she irritated? Curious? Happy? The intimacy of our domestic set-up causes me some embarrassment at first, but the girls seem quite unperturbed. I affect a similar insouciance. But although we live in such proximity we maintain a bizarrely prim decorum. We don’t wander around naked. Ulricke and I undress while Anneliese is in the bathroom or else with the lights out. I have yet to see Anneliese naked. And she’s always with us too – Ulricke and I have never spent a night alone. Since her affair with César she has had no boyfriend. My vague embarrassment swiftly departs and I begin to enjoy Anneliese’s presence during the night – like some mute and unbelievably lax chaperone. One day, to my regret, she tells me how happy she is that Ulricke ‘has’ me; how pleased she is that we are together. The twin sisters are typically close: Anneliese is the more self-composed and assured and she feels protective towards Ulricke, who’s more vulnerable and easily hurt. I reassure her of my sincerity and try not to let the strain show on my face.
With some dismay I watch Steve – an exotic figure, in his Afghan coat and flowing hair – join Anneliese in the back of Bent’s VW. Ulricke and I wave them on their way, then we walk down the road from the apartment block towards the Promenade des Anglais. Although it is after nine o’clock the night air is not unpleasantly cool. For the first time the spring chill has left the air – a presage of the bright summer to come. We walk down rue de la Buffa and cut over to the rue de France. The whores in the boutique doorways seem pleased at the clemency of the weather. They call across the street to each other in clear voices; some of them even wear hotpants.
It’s not that warm. Ulricke wears a white PVC raincoat and a scarf. I put my arm round her shoulders and hear the crackle of the plastic material. The glow from the street lamps sets highlights in the shine on her nose and cheeks . . . I worry about Steve and Anneliese in the back of Bent’s car.